232 JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN ISLAM

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Socio-Historical Roots of Islamist Terrorism

Irsyad) and Persatuan Islam (Persis—the Islamic Union). Al-Irsyad was founded by Indonesian clerics of Arab descents (around 1937) whose main objective was to disseminate strict Islamic teachings and

doctrines. 76 Founded in 1923, Persis was also famous for its conservatism in rejecting all forms of innovations and superstitions in Muslim religious beliefs and practices just like Wahabi in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Headquartered in West Java’s Bandung (the home-base of DI), Persis has been well-know for its criticism against secularism,

pluralism, and liberalism. 77 Thus the rise of JI and other radicalized Islamic groups in modern Indonesia was already implicit in the dynamics of these local political settings and histories.

Conclusion

The description I sketched above confirms what Edward Said calls “travelling idea.” Said develops a “travelling theory,” saying that the ideas and theories—like people and schools of criticism—travel “from person to person, from situation to situation, and from one period to

one another”. 78 Like other ideas and theories, the notions of radical Islamism as the roots of modern “Islamist terrorism” also travel to Southeast Asia’s regions, not only from the Middle East, Afghanistan, India, or Pakistan (“international travel”) but also from local Southeast Asia itself (“domestic travel”). Such ideas had been brought to Southeast Asia by various agents and actors—both organizations and individuals—who functioned as carriers, transmitters, and transformers of knowledge and a vehicle of changing notions of religious violence and terrorism. JI, ASG, and MILF are only part of those agents that transfer and transform ideas of radical Islamism. Equally important, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda also served as only one of the resources of Islamic radicalism, not the only ingredient of Islamist terrorism as the “international terrorism experts” assert.

Travelling idea of Islamic radicalism, furthermore, has pursued what Said 79 called the “phases of acceptance, modification, and a new interpretation” due to different social-political settings. Within the

76 Schwartz, The Two Faces of Islam. 77 Hasan, Laskar Jihad. 78 Edward Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press,

1983), p. 226.

79 Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic, p. 226.

JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN ISLAM

Volume 04, Number 02, December 2010

Sumanto Al Qurtuby context of Indonesian history, as I depicted above, the idea of Islamic

radicalism has also undergone a process of modification and interpretation of meanings. While Darul Islam’s radicalism aimed at the opposition to the Sukarno’s ‘Old Order’ regime and the establishment of an Islamic state separated from the newly Indonesian country, Komando Jihad’s religious violence emerged on the scene of Indonesian history and politics was merely as a manifestation of resistance against Suharto-led dictatorial New Order. Contemporary Islamist terrorists, moreover, appeared as the “confrontation” against what they vaguely called the “enemies of Islam.” The definition of the “enemies of Islam” definitely differs from one group to another depending on cultural, political, and economic interests of each Islamist group. In the case of Philippines, furthermore, implementation of the idea of “Islamic radicalism” also differs from group to group. MNLF, for instance, took more “nationalistic” (read, Morohood) and “less-Islamic,” while MILF was concerned with the idea of “Islamic identity” of Bangsa Moro. For MNLF, the most important thing is the creation of autonomous Southern Philippines (read, political interests), whereas MILF desired to “marry” “Islam- ness” and Morohood in an Islamic caliphate in the region (read, “symbolic/cultural interests”). ASG, by contrast, is more complicated. Although the initial goal of ASG was to create a “Southeast Asian Islamic caliphate,” after the death of its founder, ASG’s terrorism and sporadic violence were turned and grounded merely on the basis of the economic interests.

The above depiction suggests that the process of knowledge production and cultural reproduction of Islamic radicalism taking place in different time, space, and social settings has different “meanings,” interpretation, and implementation. These Islamist groups, however, have shared the same “values,” i.e. the use of “religiously inspired violence,” a sort of “sacred bitterness,” to achieve their symbolic, political, and economic interests.[]